SEATAC, Wash. — Though the Target Corp. breach has received a landslide of media attention, another data theft has hit Northwest CUs hard.
The Northwest Credit Union Association reports that fraud from a regional grocery store chain has cost 11 credit unions more than $687,000 so far, including one CU that says its card losses for this breach have exceeded its costs from the Target compromise.
URM Stores is a Spokane-based grocery store cooperative that provides food distribution and financial data processing.
In November it reported that a network breach led to exposure of personal card data for customers of 67 stores in Eastern Washington, Idaho, Montana and Oregon.
The CU association polled 21 Eastern Washington credit unions, asking how the URM breach impacted their bottom line, both in card fraud and the cost of replacing members' cards.
Eleven CUs responded. The study found that the losses for the 11 credit unions include $491,835 in fraudulent purchases and $195,763 for replacing debit or credit cards.
The league also asked about impacts from the Target breach and found 31 Washington state credit unions reporting a loss of $1.9 million. The Target survey asked only for the replacement cost for about 190,000 credit or debit cards.
Though the survey found a larger dollar amount statewide for the Target breach, the URM losses are more severe for local banks and credit unions, said Debie Keesee, CEO of the $11 million Spokane Media FCU in Spokane.
"The URM impact was much more concentrated in this area than Target," Keesee said.
Keri Buntain, card services manager for the $371 million Global CU in Spokane, Wash., said costs for GCU from the URM breach, so far, have exceeded Target losses. "This breach was more local than Target, so we have felt it."
URM officials have not identified the cause of the breach and said it may have occurred either at the local store level or within the URM data hub.
